


things that break (and the ones that were already broken)

by lightworms07



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Blood (barely), Introspection, M/M, Minor Injuries, Minor References to Self-Harm, Minor suicidal ideation, Post-Season/Series 01, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Self-Destruction, it's michael guerin- i mean is anyone surprised by that last tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28010289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightworms07/pseuds/lightworms07
Summary: Things break all the time; hands, glass. Mechanical parts. And hearts break too, even though Michael hates it, wants all the hurt to just- justgo away.A study of Michael Guerin in four parts.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	1. hands

**Author's Note:**

> this is so depressing and for what  
> lol anyway i genuinely wrote this nine months ago. i watched like 3 episodes of RNM season 2 and i remember little of the plot (besides the fact that michael and alex are gay(/bi) and tragic because of course they are.)  
> i couldn't tell you if this fandom is even still alive- I left it awhile ago. but i've been clearing out my old writing files and found this one- i decided to post it on a random whim because I'm bored.   
> who knows! right now i kinda want to go back, watch all of season 1 and then season 2 as well bc they should both be on netflix.  
> anyway **TW:** as mentioned in the tags, there are minor allusions to thoughts of suicide and desire for self-harm. each of the small sections are marked with as asterisk- skip if you want. it's very light but I wanted to be safe !
> 
> anyway there's no happiness here (not yet, probably not at all) so.. enjoy? i guess??

Michael’s not okay with it. 

No. It’s more than that, actually. He hates it. He hates Max and his fucking god complex, the way he was almost manic in his ramblings about their purpose. Maybe the past isn’t good for Max. But Michael’s broken hand keeps (kept) him tethered to reality. The past is his inebriant, his cure. Especially when he almost gets swept away by cataclysmic things like hope and death and people that leave, and _love_ , the kind that gets you stupid giddy until it explodes in your face and the bed is cold. 

How many times will he have to say goodbye to people that will never hear it?

-~-

He can’t stop thinking about his hand.

Max had no right. Michael fixates on the smoothed skin, the fingers that used to be broken. He can fold his hand, now, without worrying about numbness or pain. He’ll never wake up with his palm tingling, fingers spasming painfully when he moves the tendons too much. 

It’s easier to marvel at that. When the chaos of his mind gets too quiet, his thoughts switch back to his dead brother and the mom he never knew, to the countless others that died along with any semblance of normal he’d ever had a chance at. It’s like Michael’s brain is on a fucking freight train, one that’s hurtling toward broken tracks at the edge of a cliff- and it’ll only stop in time if he manages to forget he’s even on the train.

Michael’s drunk all the time. His blood boils with anger. Hating Max is simpler than wishing he could ask his brother why Liz Ortecho was more important than being alive. 

It’s awful and all sorts of wrong, probably, to hold a grudge for a dead guy. Michael doesn’t give a damn, just throws back another shot with the hope that it will drown out the echoes of _Max Evans is dead_.

*He signals to the barkeep for another. Not Maria- he couldn’t stomach being in Roswell after what he saw in the cave. So Michael drove, and emptied a bottle and a can, and almost ran his pickup off the fucking highway. He only decided against it because everything was flat, just an alien and the endless desert and a dark sky, which wouldn’t do much damage at all.

The old man flings his rag over his shoulder, tipping more amber liquid into Michael’s glass. The bar is nearly spotless. Michael is the only customer in the room, alone without anyone to drunkenly brawl. The barkeep wanders off before Michael can tell him to leave the bottle. 

Michael throws the liquor back too fast to taste. He thinks it’s cheap scotch. There’s nothing but pain coating the back of his mouth, dripping down his throat, rotting in his heart. _Max Evans is dead_.

Rinse and repeat. His head is fuzzy. Michael doesn’t know where he is.

 _Max Evans is dead_.

-~-

Michael drowns in the memories, on the worst nights. 

It’s been ten years now, and it only took one day that went to shit to haunt him and make his stomach go cold when he’s caught off guard. 

He remembers it vividly- the crunch of broken bones, the screaming, the potent tang of acetone that stayed in his truck for weeks after he downed bottle after bottle, curled over the steering wheel in pain.

Then Isobel. Covering up the murder. Watching the cars collide. Tears, a lot of them. Pain all around, enough shared trauma to last the town a fucking lifetime. 

Yeah, that really was a shitshow of a day.

Michael can’t help but feel guilty about suffering then. He’s not the one whose father is so blatantly disgusting, a literal stain of a human being, that he would attack his own son. Alex is the one that actually suffered that day, even though he didn’t get his hand smashed with a hammer.

Emotional wounds sting more than the physical ones. Michael thinks he owes it to Alex to let go of that day, even if he can’t.

*Now the hand is healed. Theoretically he could let go. Michael has no visible burdens to prove himself anymore. And it’s fucked up, but sometimes he’ll pick up a rock or a tool and wonder if he should smash the bones again, and make sure the hand heals even worse the second time around. His right hand shakes every time he tries, and he always lets whatever is in his grasp fall and land in the dust. 

It’s a good idea in theory, even if he can’t bring himself to do it. If Michael’s hand breaks again it’ll be final, no do-overs, no forgetting. 

Good thing Max isn’t around anymore to fix it.

-~-

His hand feels amazing, actually, even though Michael would rather die than admit that out loud. 

When he works up the courage to pick up a guitar again, its weight is both familiar and foreign, like old songs on the radio or his vague foster care memories. Maria is watching. Will she ask about his hand? He can’t bring himself to give a damn. 

Playing feels a little bit like arriving at a home Michael can’t even define. The tiny nuances return: the metallic scent, the tanging scrape when his fingers go sideways instead of up to form a new chord. The creak of the tuning pegs when he turns them too fast. The wooden thump that sounds as he taps the body to keep the beat. 

Maria wanders over, drifting hesitatingly in a way that makes Michael wonder if they’re both irretrievably lost. If he could be better to her, to everyone, really, if his circumstances were less fucked-up.

 _Circumstances_. Because now he's blaming the universe for everything he is, everything he lacks, apparently. 

“Haven’t heard you play in awhile,” Maria says, her casual tone clearly forced. Her smile is tiny and a little sad, any hope in it painted over with a setup for disappointment.

Michael barely meets her eyes. He sets the guitar on the floor, savoring the melodic thunk it makes. “Haven’t had a reason to,” he tells her, blunt and unforgiving. It’s easy. Michael shares none of the burden from her haunting past. There’s no hammer crashing down when he looks in her eyes. He thinks of a star whenever he sees her.

In another time, another world, maybe, he and Maria could be intrinsic. They could fit like puzzle pieces, and things would be uncomplicated- easy in a way Michael has never known.

The idea is absurdly impossible. It’s just too bad that the rest of him is given to another soul reminiscent of the whole damn milky way.

-~-

It took Michael a long time to succumb to the fact that his world revolves around Alex Manes. 

That little dilemma first came about when Alex enlisted, shipped off to Iraq or other places Michael can’t even name. He wakes up with Alex's name at the forefront of his mind; he wonders what Alex is doing when he’s laying in bed supposed to be asleep, or working in his bunker lab to make home more than a vague impression of an alien world.

And he especially thinks about Alex Manes at the worst possible times, like when a tiny voice whispers in the back of his mind that home can be people, too, not just a place. 

Michael laughs bitterly to himself.

Yeah, he’s completely fucked.


	2. glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> michael keeps himself busy. forcing himself not think about max is easier than the alternative. alex pays him a visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is not at all canon compliant with season 2. max is still dead (this chapter takes place between seasons 1 & 2). also, i couldn't tell you when alex finds out about the aliens in canon, but for narrative purposes in this fic he knows that michael isn't human.
> 
> that's all! read the tag updates (there's a minimal amount of blood toward the end but it's incredibly mild). this chapter fought me as i wrote it, that's just how it goes sometimes- rereading it, the prose feels stilted and strange. but michael and alex's interactions have evolved like that, so i find it fitting.
> 
> enjoy, i guess? as specified in the last chapter, there's little to no happiness here but I hope it's at least mildly entertaining regardless.

Alex Manes. Michael wishes he could hate the guy.

Maybe a part of him does hate Alex, Michael thinks with a bitter laugh. Or maybe that’s just what he tries to trick himself into believing. Hate has always been easier to stomach than lo-

No. Michael refuses to go there anymore. He and Alex are broken in a million irreparable ways, they’re haunted by the same ghosts, and things between them are just… too difficult. Too strange and destructive.

Michael should stay away. He doesn’t. He tries, but he just can’t. 

Apparently Alex feels the same magnetic pull.

Max has been dead for months, now. Michael throws himself into every project he can think of to try to block all of it out- the cave, Liz’s grief, the realization that Max is just _gone_ , making his stupid sacrifices and winding up dead for it.

So Michael works hard, and then pushes himself harder. He’s been tinkering his way through a few novel experiments, putting his research on the alien ship console to the side. That hits too close to home. He needs distractions, not reminders of his past and his shitstorm of a present. 

Liz was able to get him some chemicals from the hospital lab for his latest trials. She handed them over with a shadow of grief in her eyes- Michael had to look away. He’s trying to figure out a better formula that will heal him and Isobel, instead of just drinking nail polish remover by the bottle. 

As it turns out, acetone is even more flammable than he’d realized.

It’s led to a lot of explosions, a hailstorm of broken glass. Michael had to move his work to an abandoned research facility on the edge of town, afraid of the space below his camper detonating and taking the whole vehicle out. The walls of this new building are crumbling, but Michael managed to track down the most structural sound room, and continues blowing things up alone and in peace.

It’s easy. Michael could almost call it fun. Exploding combinations of toxic chemicals is more productive than destroying himself, at least. 

Or so he tells himself.

-~-

Michael is alone, until he isn’t. 

He can’t quite remember what day it is, or when he’d last eaten or gone outside. His life is confined to the lab and his thoughts, nothing less and nothing more. His phone died at least a day ago, not that he needs it. Unless Max is somehow miraculously resurrected, he doesn’t care much about the outside world at all. 

Until there’s a knock at the door. Cops, comes Michael’s first thought. Someone probably heard one of the explosions, or noticed the growing heap of broken glass in the bin around back, and notified the police. 

Michael pulls the door open, ready for a fight. It drains out of him instantly when Alex is standing there instead of Sheriff Valenti or one of her deputies. 

“Alex,” Michael says. He sounds surprised despite his aim for indifference. Their eyes meet and it feels like thunder, same as it always does. Michael is painfully ready to drown in the coming storm.

“Hey,” is all Alex says. There’s no weight behind the greeting, at least not directly. But their past haunts the both of them, it still does and it probably always will, so Michael can’t help but wait for the other shoe to drop every time Alex opens his mouth. 

“How’d you find me?” Michael asks.

Alex raises a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, leaning on his crutch. “Isobel told me you might be here.”

Of course. Isobel had followed him out here exactly once, curious about this project but ultimately too preoccupied to focus on anything but bringing Max back to life. She’d stepped one foot into this room, wrinkling her nose at the smell of soot and nail polish remover that blanketed everything. 

“I don’t think I want to know what all this science-y gizmo is,” Isobel had said, waving a dismissive hand.

Michael laughed at that for the first time in weeks. “Yeah, you probably don’t.”

“Why are you here?” Michael asks, pulling himself back to the present.

Alex fixes him with that sad, disappointed stare. “I just wanted to… see how you’re doing out here, I guess.”

Michael doesn’t want a wellness check. He wants to get back to work. “Well, I’m alive. That’s more than some of us can say, so I’d consider myself pretty damn fine.”

Alex just keeps looking at him, eyes impossibly deep. Michael could drown right here. He could stare at Alex forever. Both thoughts are equally aggravating and they make him want to rip his hair out. 

He doesn’t. Instead Michael forces himself to be something half-respectable and opens the door to the lab wider. “Come in, if you want,” he offers. Michael turns around and places himself back at the workbench instead of waiting to see if Alex will follow. 

Alex does. He steps carefully, a heavy reminder of his hollow leg, until he’s at Michael’s left. They’re almost close enough to touch. Michael doesn’t attempt to move closer and neither does Alex. They both just stare down at Michael’s workspace, a mess of beakers and strange substances and hastily-scrawled notes. 

“I’d ask about what you’re working on, but I don’t think I’ll understand any of it.”

Michael huffs out a half-laugh. “I’m trying to figure out a new healing agent for me, Isobel and- for both of us to use.” He blows past the slipup. _Max Evans is dead._ “Drinking nail polish remover is bound to get us weird looks at some point.” The project sounds so much more trivial saying it out loud.

But Alex still seems interested, of course he does, whether it’s genuine or not. “You know, it’s supposed to be a secret, but Liz has been working on something. Tissue regeneration. It’s possible she can bring Max back.” 

Michael slams his hand down on the table. Months ago that would have brought him agony, but thanks to Max’s savior complex it doesn’t. “I don’t want anything to do with that,” he snaps. 

Alex raises his hands placatingly. “Okay. I just thought you might want to know.”

Michael doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. Liz is heartbroken and he gets it, but the dead are dead, and trying to change that just creates false hope and then destroys it.

“It won’t work anyway,” Michael mutters.

“It could,” Alex says carefully. 

“No, it won’t.” Michael can’t talk about this. He reaches for the set of test tubes near the back of the work table, returning to his work so he doesn’t have to speak. Michael holds up one of the glass tubes, studying its color, and documenting the reaction in his journal. 

Alex steps back to let him work. In his haste, he nearly upturns a petri dish, barely catching the glass before it falls. Michael glances up just in time to see the beaker right next to it slip, crashing onto the concrete floor. The liquid contained in it explodes before hitting the ground, scattering glass shards everywhere. The chemicals seep into the cracks in the floor.

Alex moves instantly, bending down to pick up the broken pieces. He’s apologizing before Michael’s brain even registers what happened. How long has it been since he slept? Michael feels like everything is moving in slow motion.

He bends down next to Alex. “It’s fine,” Michael says, shutting down the hurried apologies. “Let me clean it up. That stuff is probably toxic for you.”

Alex shuffles back awkwardly with a tight nod. Michael uses his powers to lift the shards from the ground, leaving the pieces that have been crushed into powder behind. He’s about to transport the glass through the air and into the bin, but his focus slips when he sees Alex’s hands. The right one has a long slash cutting across skin, leaking bright red blood.

Michael drops all the broken glass hovering in the air suddenly. He thinks the shards cut his own skin on the way down, but he ignores the sting there and reaches for Alex’s hand. “You’re bleeding,” Michael says, simple and stupid.

Alex looks down at where Michael’s fingers grip his wrist. “Now we both are,” he says wryly. 

It’s true. Alex’s wound is bigger and it looks worse, but Michael does have a small nick on his thumb. He couldn’t care less about his own blood. “Come here,” Michael says, using his grip to pull Alex up, so that they’re both standing. 

Alex follows hesitantly. If he wants to pull away from Michael’s grip, he doesn’t show it. Soon they’re both standing by the low, dirty sink in the corner. Michael is still holding Alex’s wrist. He doesn’t need to be, but he is. 

Alex lets Michael guide him, pulling his hand under the faucet water. “You don’t have to do that,” Alex murmurs.

Michael stares up at Alex. When their eyes meet it’s electric, cosmic. Looking away feels almost impossible. “Let me,” he says, gentler than he tends to be. 

Alex obliges. Michael cleans the wound as best he can, using a small amount of antibacterial soap still left in the old bottle on the sink ledge. When he’s finished he washes away his own blood with less care. Nothing about him is human. Nothing about him matters, next to Alex Manes. 

Their blood mixes together in the sink, copper against porcelain, red against white. It’s strange, how human Michael can seem. Their blood thins out from the faucet water, dispersing down the drain until there’s no trace of it left. 

Michael’s hand will heal faster than Alex’s- and isn’t that just a twisted imitation of his past injury, their old scars. 

Finally, the faucet is turned off and Michael releases Alex’s wrist. His fingertips buzz from the loss of contact. Alex steps away immediately, and something in Michael’s chest twists but he shoves it down and ignores it. 

“I should leave,” Alex says, still bashful. “I’ve already destroyed enough stuff in here.”

 _You don’t have to_ , Michael thinks. “I guess I’ll see you around, then,” Michael says, even though he might not if he can hold himself back.

Alex hesitates for a moment, something that looks like disappointment flickering across his face before it vanishes. He nods to Michael, turns on his heel and walks out. 

Michael lets him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does michael even have a phone? i can't remember how committed he was to the off-grid cowboy aesthetic. anyway, these two really need to have a long, heartfelt discussion about their issues. they probably won't, continuing the way they dance around each other, so I decided to incorporate that here. michael is too angry and alex is too trapped... it's interesting yet depressing to write about.  
> chapter three will be out at some point. hopefully i can write it faster than in seventeen days (lmao wow) but regardless see ya then

**Author's Note:**

> first part down. i kind of like this fic so i think i will rewatch the show and continue writing this !  
> hope it was enjoyable in whatever way. again this fandom might be dead by now? but someone might come across this fic and enjoy it so here it is :)


End file.
